Searching for, and finding, grace

(So much for daily journaling! It’s been since Jan. 8, but at least I’ve been reading!)

Wow! Just, wow! Earlier I had said “ya’ gotta’ love those Genesis stories!” And you do, but what a sleezy bunch of characters. Rapists, cheaters, philanderers, bullies, brats, liars, whiners, pretenders — is there any unsavory trait not shown by these chosen ones?

And, frankly, the Luke readings aren’t much help. Lots of the familiar stories in there — and lots of judgment stories in there.

I’m so confused.

Where’s the grace that is so much a part of my faith?

It’s here: “So it was not you who sent me here, but God,” Joseph says. (Gen. 45:8a) And it’s said even clearer in the next chapter of Genesis: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” (Gen: 50:20a).

So, if God can use this bunch of miscreants and scoundrels, what does that say about the rest of us?

Think about this: Joseph’s brothers, who had schemed against him, who had planned to kill him, were in the end saved.

They were saved before they knew they needed saving, saved before they repented, saved before they asked to be saved.

That is grace, amazing grace.

Grace and peace.

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P.S.: Included in the readings for the last several days is what i think is biblical support for journalism — woot, woot! What, you didn’t see it?

It’s Luke 12:3.

Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.